Conrad Theodore Seitz

[Judge Gonzalo Curiel, second from right–(with thanks to New York Times)]

I just can’t resist putting down Donald J. Drumpf (Trump).  He’s such a fat target, it is so easy, it is just impossible to resist.  Now he’s insulting the judge who is presiding over the class action case against his “Trump University”– a fraudulent “educational institution” which charged enormous fees for pep talks.  These talks were advertised to feature his personal explanation of his signature “deal-making skills”, but in reality featured at best a life-sized cardboard cut-out representing the “guru of real estate.”  Over 5,000 people paid as much as $35,000 or more for lectures on “the art of the deal.”

I would like to point out again that Mr. Drumpf is not, as he claims, a financial or deal-making wizard.  As a commenter explained earlier, if he had just invested his money (his inheritance from his father) in an index fund, he would be worth something like twenty billion dollars now instead of considerably less than his claimed ten billion.  In fact, there are dark rumors floating about that claim that his fortune is well south of a billion dollars.  Even if he had everything he claims to have, he would not be able to self-fund his campaign for president– estimates of the total cost of this year’s election are well over six billion dollars.

This explains why he has enlisted the reactionary Zionist casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (and many others who prefer to remain anonymous) to help fund his campaign.  The Koch brothers have decided, wisely, to concentrate their funding efforts on Congressional elections– where their money is more likely to pay for successful candidates whom they can then control, to the benefit of their coal and oil businesses.

To continue with my main put-down of Donald: There was, for a time (2004-10), an entity known as “Trump University” (also named “Trump Wealth Institute” and “Trump Entrepeneur Initiative.”)  This entity changed its name because, in New York State, the use of the term “university” is limited to accredited institutions.  The charges for attending this non-accredited and non-credit conferring institution generally ranged from $1,500 to $35,000, although one individual was said to have spent $80,000.  In 2013, the New York Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Drumpf (Trump) for “illegal business practices.”  “In October 2014, a New York judge found Trump [Drumpf] personally liable for operating the company without the required business license.”  (Wikipedia.)  (For a more complete picture of these lawsuits, check Wikipedia’s entry for “Trump University.”)

Two federal class action lawsuits are also pending.  The judge presiding over these cases, Alonzo Curiel of the Circuit Court for Southern California, has set a hearing for July 22, 2016. Donald filed a defamation suit against the lead plaintiff, which has been dismissed, in part because “Trump University is a limited-purpose public figure” and his lawyers could not show “actual malice.”   Donald has also repeatedly accused the judge in public speeches of being “a hater” and biased against him because he (the judge) is “Spanish” or “Mexican.”  He has said that the judge should recuse himself, although his lawyers have not formally asked for a recusal.   (Wikipedia.)

For some unknown reason, Donald Drumpf thinks that the judge’s Mexican parents (the judge himself is a natural-born American) disqualify him from making judgments about Drumpf’s fraudulent behavior.  It is true that Drumpf has repeatedly insulted Mexicans by claiming that he would build a wall at the border between Mexico and the US when he is elected president. Apparently he (Drumpf) thinks that because of this insult (and many other, worse insults and animadversions), anyone with Mexican parents (even if the parents are legal immigrants) is unqualified to judge whether Drumpf’s obviously fraudulent “university” is breaking any laws or liable for civil damages.

From the context of Donald’s speeches, it appears that he just looked at the judge’s name and simply jumped to the conclusion that he could accuse him of bias because he was “Spanish” (untrue) or “Mexican” (also technically untrue: in fact, he is at most Mexican-American.)  This appears to be Donald’s standard operating procedure: he has repeatedly re-Tweeted statements that are inflammatory and untrue, without checking on their accuracy, simply because they looked good to him.  What is worse, Donald has stuck to his guns even when the falsity of the statements have been pointed out to him.

Judges have universally refused to recuse themselves because of ethnic or racial potential biases.  Their reasoning has been that, once you recuse yourself for one case, there is no end to recusals.  If you allowed recusals on this basis, you would have to allow a recusal on virtually any basis.  You could argue that a judge was biased against you because he looked at you funny.

This is not to say that judges are not biased against defendants for racial or religious reasons.  This bias certainly exists, and operates on a daily basis.  However, to acknowledge such a potential basis in any case would lead to allowing it in every case, making it impossible to find a suitable judge for any defendant.  One would have to select a judge who was the same age, sex, race/ethnicity, religion, and had the same political leanings as the defendant (among many other potential sources of bias.)

There are other, more essential reasons for a judge to recuse himself, most importantly, when the judge has a personal interest in the case.  For example, a judge who was elected to his post (in a state that held judicial elections) with the help of an enormous contribution to his election campaign by a coal company failed to recuse himself from a case in which the coal company was a defendant (making the campaign contribution a highly profitable one for the coal company.)  The Federal Supreme Court decided that this failure to recuse for conflict of interest made the judgement for the coal company invalid.

Thus, a monetary conflict of interest is a cause for recusal according to the Supreme Court.  A “conflict of interest” due to insults delivered by the defendant is not, no matter what Donald says. If it was, all the defendant would have to do to get a recusal would be to observe the judge’s ethnicity and make insults about it.  Donald Drumpf is the most narcissistic, thin-skinned candidate for president since Andrew Jackson.  You’ll recall that Mr. Jackson reacted negatively to aspersions on his wife’s character; he won election anyway, and is now memorialized with his face on our currency.  Just think: someday Donald Drumpf could have his picture on our paper money.